Albion captain Scott Carson has ordered the Baggies team to bite back at the “bullies” as he sounded a rallying cry ahead of the trip to Preston.

The goalkeeper warned his side they will need to top their stunning display at Middlesbrough to beat third-placed Preston in the crunch Deepdale clash.

Carson believes Albion must toughen up to win the second-versus-third meeting, after being “bullied” in their back-to-back defeats by Crystal Palace and Barnsley.

He said: “On Saturday and Tuesday a few players got ruffled up. Opposition players put tackles in and we have to do the same and if that means winning nastily, like other teams are doing, then we need to do it.

“We need to try to bully teams a bit more and put some big tackles in early, just to give people a lift. We need to make sure we can’t be bullied.

“We can’t go around thinking we’re going to beat teams 5-0 like we did Middlesbrough. Sometimes you need to take a 1-0 and a scruffy goal. We have 20 points from 10 games so it’s not the end of the world, but we have to treat this week as a wake-up call.

“The teams we played before Barnsley and Palace allowed us to play football, but the last couple of teams have given us a kick up the backside and made us realise that we’re not going to get our own way every single game.

“We have to be prepared to do the dogged stuff when things aren’t going our way. These two games have opened our eyes to that.”

Albion’s back-to-back Championship defeats came hot on their heels of their history-making 5-0 win at Boro – their biggest away success for 32 years.

But Carson insists they must perform even better than they did on Teesside to win tomorrow.

He said: “It will take a Middlesbrough-like performance and more to beat them, I think.”